A hard year for open enrolment, but hope ahead

View the FT’s 2010 open-enrolment ranking

Darden School of Business tops the Financial Times 2010 ranking of open-enrolment programme providers. After four years of coming second or third, based on data from both programme participants and business schools, the Virginia-based school returns to the position it last held in 2005.

Dan McCusker, a senior manager who attended the executive programme at Darden in June 2009, rates the experience as among the best of his academic career. “Twenty-six years as an officer in the US Air Force and five years in industry, and this is by far the best school I have ever attended,” he says.

Darden’s improvement comes after programme participants ranked the school first on eight of the 10 feedback criteria, including three of the most important: the design of the programme; the extent to which new skills were relevant and easy to implement; and the attainment of main learning aims.

Thunderbird School of Global Management also performed well within the top 60 providers. Ranked fifth this year, it has climbed six places in the past 12 months.

Fundação Dom Cabral’s ninth place, up from 13th in 2009, shows the growing strength of executive education in South America. The Brazil-based institution scored particularly well for the design of its programmes as well as the overall quality of its facilities. Essec Business School in Paris and Singapore also enters the top 10, having been ranked 16th last year.

Yet in spite of the generally positive news for many of the schools in this year’s ranking, the past 12 months have proved problematic. The FT’s data reveal the extent of the downturn.

First, the number of participants in open programmes has dropped considerably. In 2008, almost 140,000 students took part in an open course at one of the 60 business schools listed – an average of 2,325 students per school. In 2009 (the class survey for the 2010 ranking), this figure fell to below 1,950 – a 17 per cent fall from the previous year.

Second, lower levels of participation have led to a reduction in income. Of the 60 schools ranked, 36 reported lower revenues in 2009 than those realised the year before. Two-thirds of those saw a reduction of 15 per cent or more. These figures are in stark contrast with data for the two previous years – over 80 per cent of schools reported annual growth in income for both 2007 and 2008 (see chart below).

This level of decline has not been uniform across regions, even though the overall trend is downwards. Business schools in North America have been the worst affected, with the average number of participants dropping by 21 per cent year on year, to nearly 2,200 per school. While the total number of participants also fell for schools in South America over the same period – down 5.7 per cent – the average number of students is now the highest of any region (2,579 per school). Eight of the 60 schools in the 2010 ranking are in South America.

However, concerns have been raised that the decline in numbers may be part of a wider structural issue, unconnected to the economic turmoil.

According to Jonathan Slack, chief executive of the UK-based Association of Business Schools, the drop-off in participation, while exacerbated by the economic crisis, forms part of a broader trend.

“In the longer term, we expect to see a move away from open programmes,” says Slack. “Increasingly, individuals seek a programme that offers a recognised qualification, such as an MBA, EMBA or master’s degree, while business clients prefer a more customised option for their delegates.”

While open offerings are well suited to a local audience, customised programmes enable a more global approach.

Analysis of the data submitted by participants lends some credence to this theory, suggesting the start of the decline pre-dated the financial crisis. On average, the number of students completing an open programme in 2008 was 1.8 per cent lower than in 2007 – in effect, every school lost more than 40 students.

Graphic by Russell Birkett

View the 2010 ranking methodology